8^th stop of Culture Nights organised as a part of the Turkish Summer School program was Kocaeli. Travelling from city to city, Friendship Truck met with Kocaeli locals in the city’s Fairground.

Program organised with the contributions of the city’s Governor and Mayor, started as the students hosted by the Yunus Emre Institute and the Ministry for Turks Abroad and Related Communities welcomed the Friendship Truck. These students have been receiving a training at the Kocaeli University’s Language Centre DİLMER and participating many cultural activities.

Kocaeli locals who filled Kocaeli Fairground, welcomed 40 students form 20 countries with open arms. Each student greeted the people of Kocaeli and gave support messages to Turkey. After many activities to which the local people of Kocaeli have also participated, Kocaeli Metropolitan Municipality hosted a dinner at the SEKA Park Restaurant. Subsequent to the dinner, the “Culture Nights” programmes started at 8 P.M. at the Kocaeli Fairground with the screening of a short introductory film on Turkish Summer School.

People of Kocaeli showed a great interst in the programme where Lejla Musinbegovic from Bosnia-Herzegovina and Omar Samim from Afghanistan read poems and sang songs in Turkish while Clara Föller from Germany, Ayşe and Hatice Hadzimejlic, Nisada Visca, and Muemara Skender from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Xhevdet Dafku from Albania and Zainab Abbas from Jordan performed some very fine examples of the Turkish folk dances.

The most exciting event of the night was the “I Compete in Turkish” contest. In the contest hosted by Mert Talat Dilekçioğlu, Violeta Neacsu from Romania, Xhevdet Dafku from Albania, Muhammed Eshage from Sudan, Kenza Essassi from Morocco and Nisada Visca from Bosnia-Herzegovina competed. The audience particularly had fun when the local people were also asked to take part in the I Compete in Turkish competition where students answered questions on Turkish culture, history, art, grammar, and Kocaeli.

Nisada Visca came in the first place by answering 7 questions out of 10 correctly. After the students were presented with their awards, students accompanied the local people of Kocaeli singing folk songs in Turkish. The night ended at late hours with an Anatolian folk dance on fraternity.